


Circles as the Dark Winds Down

by rm (arem)



Series: Too Soon and Always [4]
Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 02:19:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arem/pseuds/rm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt and Blaine borrow Wes's tiny, tiny studio for a few days. Many, many thresholds are crossed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circles as the Dark Winds Down

Kurt looks like he's going to sit up stick straight all the way to New York. Blaine's a little surprised at it considering Kurt's actually been there before and so tries not to say anything even as he sprawls in the seat next to him, watching him with the same raptness that Kurt's watching the snow-covered world outside the train blur by.

Eventually Kurt turns to him, just his head, as his body still leans towards the city they're another good two hours away from.

"It was supposed to be like this," he explains in that smug, apologetic not-for-himself-but-that-he-has-to-explain-it-to- _you_ way that he has.

Blaine gives him a lazy smile and reaches for his hand. "What to you mean?"

Kurt turns back to the window before he speaks again. "You were supposed to be with me. And it was supposed to be cold."

"One day you'll be doing this for auditions," Blaine says casually.

Kurt nods, smiling like he's trying not to. Then he turns to Blaine and beams. "But not yet."

"You're not frustrated that it's not happening _right now_?" he asks. Kurt has always hated waiting for his future.

"Everything's going so fast sometimes," Kurt says softly, not even really to Blaine.

"Sorry about that," he replies, voice quiet in a way Kurt tries not to tense at.

Kurt shakes his head, the motion tiny but furious. "Did you ask me to live with you so I could go to school here or so that we could be together?”

“So we could be together,” Blaine says, laugh nervous and incredulous and a little bit angry.

“Then _stop_ apologizing.”

“Sorry,” he says with another laugh that makes it clear he knows how ridiculous he is, before he reaches for Kurt and tugs him close so they can spoon in the seats. Kurt struggles for a moment, checking around them to see if anyone notices or cares.

"We're fine," Blaine says his voice a little bit insistent and overbearing in a way that he knows Kurt sometimes likes, and, well, sometimes really doesn't.

"I never thought --" Kurt starts breathlessly, but Blaine doesn't let him finish because neither of them can ever really stand it when Kurt manages to finish that particular sentence: _I never thought I'd have this. I never thought I'd survive._

"I know," he says. "I know."

"So," Kurt says, cheerful and coy and so obviously changing the topic as he reaches out to put his fingers against the slightly frosting window, "Promise me we'll go ice skating?"

"Everything you want," Blaine says easily, holding him tighter and kissing the back of his neck.

Kurt sighs happily and snuggles down into Blaine's arms, even as he continues to stare out the window ferociously as the motion of the train lulls his boyfriend into a shallow sleep.

*

Wes meets them at Penn Station and insists, like the true Warbler gentleman he still is, on shouldering the bag Blaine had packed for the both of them.

“I'll show you around and then take off for Pris's; put clean sheets on the bed before you head out and give me the keys back when you hit Ohio and we're all good,” he's saying to Blaine as Kurt stops and twists his head up and around to look at a New York that this time he doesn't have to strategize running away into.

He jogs a couple of steps to catch up with them, bending for a moment to scoop up his boyfriend's hand in a tight grip. Blaine glances at him briefly to make sure all is well, and Kurt finds himself grinning as if that small kindness defines the arc of the horizon.

*

Wes's place is tiny, a studio apartment barely bigger than their bedroom in Boston, but it's in _New York_ , on the edge of the West Village, and it will be all theirs for the next four days before they take the train back to Boston to head out the next day on the long drive back to Ohio for Christmas.

Kurt has already written out everything they are going to do in New York – lists and lists of store windows and shopping and gay landmarks and Broadway. It's pilgrimage and pilgrimage and _pilgrimage_ because Kurt's plans are all _important_ and _significant_ , and Blaine can worry about the easy stuff like where to eat and which ice skating rink is best. Kurt, meanwhile, is going to educate him on their _tribe_.

*

They take Wes and his girlfriend Priscilla to a Spanish place three miserably freezing blocks from the apartment and start drinking almost immediately, ordering a pitcher of slightly watery sangria they all know will be only the first of many.

Pris has a high, loud laugh, that Kurt likes because she's _such_ a soprano, even if she says she doesn't _really_ sing. As she asks them questions about themselves that, surprisingly, don't seem based in whatever Wes has related to her, Kurt is surprised to find how happy he is not to be doing the gay thing for a change. They have a lot of friends in Boston that he suspects they only have because they're all queer, and it gets a little tedious in oddly the same way his life was tedious before he met Blaine and everyone he knew was simply someone he was stuck with because they all had glee in common.

“So,” Wes says, his voice exactly as serious as it ever was when he was on the Warblers' senior council that Kurt has to work hard not to laugh at him. “This living together thing. How's that going?”

Kurt feels awkward, and he can tell Blaine does too, and both of them try to answer at once, odd, pained smiles frozen across their faces.

“Wait,” Kurt says, after he and Blaine have almost managed to stop spluttering over each other. “Can I be serious for a moment?”

Wes makes that face he used to make at meetings, the one that says _Go ahead and hang yourself; it's entertaining_.

“I feel really old. All the time, and it's completely weird,” Kurt admits in a way he knows he wouldn't if he hadn't just drank two glasses of sangria faster than was probably wise with only appetizers on the table. Then he leans forward, bracing a hand on Blaine's knee, “and it's _fantastic_.”

He feels Blaine shift, like he was holding his breath and just finally stopped, his brain sighing in pleasure at the return of oxygen. “And you worry too much,” Kurt says, turning to him.

“I bet you think that's cute,” Pris says.

Blaine and Wes roll their eyes as Kurt makes a ridiculous face at her and says, “Completely,” in as exaggerated a fashion as possible.

Blaine reaches over, grabs Kurt's face, and laughing, kisses him hard on the cheek. Kurt leans against him for a moment, and then winks at Pris before taking a smug and dainty sip of his drink.

*

Halfway through the meal, Wes interrogates Kurt about school and Kurt feels weird about it because it's all a bit more classical and serious than he ever thought anything about his voice would ever be. It's certainly not something he has practice talking about yet; Blaine's friends know him as the singer and it's not something they engage with much curiosity.

Wes, he thinks, must sense his discomfort, because he seems to drop the topic after making some noise about how, despite not being alumni, he and Blaine simply must return to Dalton for homecoming next year and maybe provide some coaching to the current crop of Warblers.

But then he fixes his gaze on Blaine. “Please tell me you're auditioning for _something_ next semester.”

“My workload is really heavy,” Blaine says, and Kurt's immediately attuned to the breathy embarrassment in his voice.

“When has that ever not been the case?” Wes asks with a chuckle.

“Come on. You know college is different. You've been doing it a year longer than we have, for one.”

“Blaine. You are singularly gifted. In a totally different way than Kurt is. It wouldn't do to let that go. Or let Dalton down.”

Blaine rolls his eyes. “Seriously? Can't you get your alumni glory from someone who's an actual graduate?”

Wes snorts. “Consider this entirely personal. I loved singing behind you. So audition for shit, I know your school has a ton of groups, or I'm going to come up there and make you audition for shit.”

Blaine laughs, only slightly less awkwardly this time. “Yes, sir.”

Kurt flags down the waitress and orders another another pitcher as he watches Wes fidget with Pris's hand, his own fingers lingering over her bare ring finger. He's thinking about proposing, Kurt realizes, and is waiting maybe for Blaine to bully him into it, just as he's just tried to bully Blaine into auditioning.

Kurt sighs. People are so _sad_.

He jumps as Blaine's hands find his waist. “Don't look so dejected,” comes his boyfriend's breath in his ear. “And keep drinking. I want you pliant and lazy and loose tonight.”

Kurt raises a slightly skeptical eyebrow at an entirely tipsy Blaine.

“Yes, exactly what you're thinking,” Blaine says.

Kurt shoves him away with a practiced laugh, but even so finds himself blushing and gulping his wine (which truthfully is bitter and has the entirely wrong mix of fruit in it) as Priscilla's eyes track back and forth between them as if trying to calculate whether the scope of their relationship is somehow larger than the time they've been together. Wes, to Kurt's immense relief, seems oblivious.

*

When they get back to the apartment, Kurt, who's _definitely_ drunker than Blaine, finds himself pressed up against the door to the small terrace, cold bleeding through his clothes as Blaine breathes hotly in his ear.

If Kurt means to speak, he can't imagine what he was considering saying when he hears the moan that escapes his lips.

“Tell me you're game for this,” Blaine murmurs, and it's clearly a question, one Kurt could perfectly well say no to, but Blaine's never really _pushed_ before, and that's intriguing in its own right.

Kurt answers by taking Blaine's hand and dragging it down to his crotch.

“Game,” Kurt says, nervous and breathless as Blaine squeezes.

*

“Wait,” Kurt says, twisting his head from side to side against Wes's pillows.

Blaine, clearly focused on not making a disappointed sound, sits back on his heels, condom packet he was about to open with his teeth halfway to his mouth.

Kurt chuckles slightly, leans up onto his elbows and runs a palm up Blaine's chest. He's drunk enough that all the texture of him is overwhelming more than familiar.

When he realizes Blaine is still frozen in a slightly agonized place, Kurt sits up, takes the condom from him, and, as he tosses it aside, leans up to bite Blaine's lower lip.

“Why are we using condoms?” he says, somehow sounding breathless and sensible all at once.

“Because... that's... Kurt...?” Blaine is definitely breathless and not at all sensible.

“You're the only person I've ever fucked, Blaine. And you can't get me pregnant.”

“But... we've always... shouldn't we talk about this sober?”

“Probably,” Kurt admits. “Do we need to?”

Blaine shakes his head and Kurt thinks he looks like he's going to cry. He runs the back of his hand down his boyfriend's cheek before dropping back to his elbows. “Then let's do this,” he says coyly, bringing a leg up so he can trail his toes down Blaine's left arm.

Blaine is worship then, palms across every part of him, as if his hands are all that serve to define the limits of Kurt's flesh. It's hot enough that Kurt almost doesn't feel nervous when he watches Blaine slick himself up, clearly enjoying the difficulty of forcing himself to stop.

It's awkward at first, feeling more impossible than actually hurting, and then Blaine leans forward and touches his nose to Kurt's, which makes them both laugh and is somehow enough for the head of Blaine's prick to actually press into, instead of just against, him.

“Oh god!”

“Good?” Blaine asks, breathless.

“Moremoremoremore.”

Blaine pushes in slowly, the tension of the moment making anything else impossible if they want this to work.

Blaine's panting hard by the time he's fully inside and Kurt's whimpering softly, biting at the pads of Blaine's fingers that are rubbing absently against his lips.

“Please move?” Kurt says, a little bit desperate. Because the not moving hurts, and he's really hoping the moving is going to be good or else this isn't. The thing is, though, he has a feeling it's going to be fantastic.

He's not wrong. It's _devastating_ , and he grabs at Blaine's arms and back desperately as he's fucked, wishing there was any way to articulate this frankly terrifying feeling that curls into him in a way that feels like it will never leave, stealing the only parts of him that matter -- his mind and his voice and his hips -- permanently. And, despite how impaired his ability to observe the moment is, he can tell that Blaine's in awe of it, not just because of how it must feel for him, but because of how it looks on Kurt. And that's very, very satisfying.

*

After, they spend a long time staring at each other in a way that makes Kurt feel like he's forgotten how to blink.

“That was --”

“Not yet, Blaine,” Kurt says, wanting to hold the intimacy of their silence as long as he can.

But Blaine can't manage to stay quiet for long and when he finally can't stop himself from saying how wonderful it was, Kurt shatters, sobbing, he suspects, solely so he doesn't have to speak. Miraculously, it doesn't seem to freak Blaine out at all, and instead of calming after the first breaking wave of it, Kurt finds himself laughing in Blaine's arms instead.

“You,” he says, once he can manage to drag some of the smugness of his persona back up around him, “are fantastic.”

“You're not too bad yourself, Kurt Hummel,” Blaine says softly, his voice warm and generous.

“I cannot believe I just lost my vaguely heteronormative virginity in Wes's bed,” Kurt groans after a while, rolling away from Blaine and dropping his head hard back into the pillows.

“It's New York,” Blaine says. “You lost it in New York.”

Kurt props himself up on one elbow and smirks at Blaine. “You planned this, and you are fucking perfect.”

“I sort of am,” Blaine says and reaches out to ruffle Kurt's hair.

*

They talk about the condom thing awkwardly over a breakfast of bagels with way too much cream cheese that Blaine's picked up from the deli ( _bodega_ , Kurt insists) downstairs.

“I'm just surprised is all,” Blaine says, leaning against what passes for Wes's kitchen counter.

Kurt shrugs. “I don't see why.”

“You're so... you're just so connected to the whole gay culture thing, like, from before we were even _born_ , so I thought if there was anyone who could be more intense about condoms and safe sex and doing the right thing than me, it'd be you.”

“Do you think we did the wrong thing?” Kurt asks so blandly it's terrifying.

“I didn't say that.”

“Look. It was something I'd been meaning to bring up to you, for when I... you... you know, and then this whole other thing was happening, and I don't exactly have filters when I'm drunk, _as you know_ , and here we are. If you want to use a condom next time, we'll use a condom next time.”

“I don't want to use a condom next time,” Blaine says very quietly.

Kurt smiles shyly. “Okay.”

“But this means, if either of us ever fucks up, we kinda have to come clean about it.”

“Were you planning on cheating on me?” Kurt asks, more amused by this turn in the conversation than he would have thought.

“No! And I'm sure you're not planning on cheating on me either, but shit happens, and we're _eighteen_ and it's not inconceivable that one of us is going to make a less than brilliant choice at some point. And because we did what we did last night, we have to agree that we'll talk about that if it happens. And... try to work through it,” Blaine says with a helpless sort of shrug.

“I don't think I have a deal breaker with you,” Kurt says softly, looking Blaine in the eyes. “You fuck up, you tell me. I'll do the same. I don't think... I don't think anything's hard in the face of what's easy about this.”

Blaine swallows and looks down at the counter before looking back up at Kurt, his smile shy now. “Okay.”

Kurt grins. “Okay. Good. God. We are _so_ grown up.”

“I know, right?”

Kurt giggles.

“And you know you're totally fucking me tonight. Now that we've sorted that out.”

“Oh yeah,” Kurt says. “I know.”

*

After a day of Christmas windows and Kurt dragging Blaine by the hand through all of Bendel's _and_ Tiffany  & Co. (“It's not Tiffany's, Blaine, it's Tiffany & Co., and yes, it matters.”) they take the 1 train down to Christopher street, so that Kurt can take them to a small, dingy bar down a few steps in a half-basement on the next street over.

It has a piano and a crowd of kids, mostly straight, he thinks, standing around it and singing along. Their voices are beautiful, but the piano, really, really isn't.

“Oh god. What's wrong with it?” Kurt says putting a hand to his head in horror.

Blaine listens for a moment, deeply attentive. It's not actually _that_ out of tune, it's just... _messed up_. “Seven really dead keys, I think?” he says.

“Oh my god.”

“Do we need to go?” Blaine asks, chuckling.

“No,” Kurt says very stubbornly. “No. We need to stay. I need a rum and coke. And we both need to sing, very, very loudly.”

So that's exactly what they do. And it's spectacularly collaborative chaos, voices pressing forward and jumping back as needed based on who's in the room at any given time. Kurt smiles from their table when Blaine sings pressed up against the dying whale of an instrument just to feel the vibration of it as he sings anything other than a chorus, and he leaps out of his own seat to jump into a line with Blaine and a bunch of the other kids there when the pianist plays “Seasons of Love.”

It's such a cliché. But it's so perfect, and Kurt can't believe how stupidly lucky he is.

As the song dies out and the pianist announces he's taking a break, Kurt takes Blaine's hand as they stay standing in the middle of the tiny space.

“Why didn't you audition?” he asks flirtatiously, knowing it's the one voice of his Blaine simply won't be able to say no to, not right now, not after that.

“It was part of the deal,” Blaine says simply, sweetly, as if it was somehow an easy choice, which Kurt damn well knows it wasn't even if he's not quiet getting what Blaine is telling him.

“What?”

“With my father. He couldn't make me give you up, so he made me give up singing. At least seriously.”

“That's why you want a piano,” Kurt says softly.

Blaine gives him a tiny little shrug.

“No,” Kurt says, his voice as steely as Blaine's ever heard it. “No, fuck that. He hasn't talked to you in months. He won't even know! The second, the second we get back we're going to start working on songs for you and practicing and... no, Blaine. You can't... no!”

“What if I said I didn't want to risk it?” he asks softly.

Kurt smiles at him, like a knife again, the way he had at all of them the day they'd signed on the apartment. “And what if I said I did?”

“What does that even mean?” Blaine asks, but Kurt can tell he's won already, and so drags Blaine back to their table and presses him into his seat before taking his own.

“It _means_ , dummy,” leaning across to him as if they are deep in conspiracy now, and truly, they always have been, “that if shit gets fucked up, we'll figure it out.”


End file.
